


your father's gone below

by mayfriend



Series: I Heard A Rumour [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Past Child Abuse, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 09:43:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18247301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayfriend/pseuds/mayfriend
Summary: Inspired by umbrellamom's tags onthisgifset.“I heard a rumour-” she starts, and Sir Reginald’s head snaps up. Their eyes meet.“Number Three-” he begins to stand, finally paying attention, but he’s too slow.“-that you actually love us.”





	your father's gone below

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Melissa Auf der Maur's song 'Father's Grave'.
> 
>  
> 
> This is gonna be the first in a series of works exploring how events in TUA would change, and how the Hargreeves kids themselves would change, if Allison had used her power on Reginald to make him a loving father (and unintentionally avert the apocalypse).
> 
> I don't have any of this planned out per se, so if you have any ideas/insights into what you think would happen after this inciting incident, please don't hesitate to let me know in the comments!

Allison doesn’t know what she was expecting, or why she even bothered expecting _anything_ anymore. Mom began pulling her siblings away, one by one, and Sir Reginald didn’t even look up as they left. He didn’t even _move_.

When Allison was five, she wanted a puppy, something for her very own to fuss over and pet and hold and love, a love that wasn't split and shared and stolen. She tried to rumour Dad, and in return she got a split lip. He’d never hit her before then, perhaps because it would take too much energy, and he'd never hit her since, perhaps for the same reason. She hadn’t tried since, had been scared to by the dark promise in his eyes _(if you ever try that again-),_ but at that moment she’s so angry, so hurt, that all her fear is banished in a whirl of white hot fury.

“I heard a rumour-” she starts, and Sir Reginald’s head snaps up. Their eyes meet.

“Number Three-” he begins to stand, finally paying attention, but he’s too slow.

“-that you actually love us.”

She holds his gaze as the words pass between them, and for a long, terrible moment, she thinks it hasn’t worked. Thinks he’s going to do worse than slap her this time for trying to influence him, thinks that she was an idiot for thinking he would ever be susceptible to her powers like everybody else. Sir Reginald wasn't an ordinary man, wouldn't fall to her compulsions the same way petty criminals and art thieves did. She shudders, his voice as clear in her mind as it has ever been, tucked away deep inside somewhere she just stumbled into by accident: _if you ever try that again-_

But he opens his mouth, and doesn’t shout at her. Doesn't emerge from behind his desk, just stands, staring. A beat passes, and Allison fights down the urge to turn tail and run, run as fast as she can. “Grace!” He calls, barely raising his voice, and Mom hurries back to the room, her hands clasped in front of her, a sunny smile on her symmetrical face.

“Yes, sir?” She says chirpily, her eyes darting to Allison’s pinched lips and wide eyes. “The children are going to bed now. It’s 9:02pm.”

“...bring them back.”

Allison thinks she’s misheard at first, but Grace is too artificial to clock how strange Sir Reginald’s request was, how entirely out of character. Allison doesn’t say anything as she leaves, doesn’t dare asking if it worked, half-afraid it will break the spell. He could be pretending, but-

But he wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to punish her if it hadn’t. He certainly wouldn’t still be looking at her - right at her _-_ like this. _(If you ever try that again-)_ It might be wishful thinking, but she thinks - she hopes, she prays - that there’s something almost like emotion in those pale eyes. 

The stairs creak, and the others walk through the door. They shuffle, unsure what to do. Sir Reginald has never actually _asked_ for them before. Luther falls in at her side, and Allison feels better that she’s not alone anymore, even if Luther will always do what Dad says without question. He opens his mouth. Allison waits, they all wait, for a chastisement, a punishment, something, anything. “Goodnight, children,” he finally manages, sounding a little hoarse, “I hope you all sleep well.”

Allison’s mouth is dry as Mom leads them upstairs, tucks them into their beds, sings them lullabies low and quiet so the sound doesn’t carry. She doesn’t sleep for hours.

* * *

The next morning, the strangeness continues. She half expected it to wear off in the night, for it to have been a dream or a nightmare, something half forgotten by the time she wakes. At breakfast, Sir Reginald doesn’t turn the radio on. The meal is accompanied only by the sounds of clinking cutlery and sizzling bacon. Just as she’s finishing up her eggs, he speaks. “Did you all have… good nights?”

Nobody speaks. Wildly, Allison thinks that this is a trick, a test, just like she first thought, to see who breaks the rules first. He frowns at their non-response. “I asked you all a question. Number One?”

That was close enough to an order for Luther to feel able to respond. “Uh, yes sir. I slept well.”

“Good,” the old man says, straightening his jacket, “good. Number Two?”

Diego glances around the rest of the table, as if checking that everyone else is hearing what he’s hearing. “F-f-fine, sir.” He winces, waiting for the chastisement for stuttering, but it doesn’t come. Instead, he only nods, as if he hasn’t always commented on Diego’s stutter whenever he hears it, and looks to Allison.

“How about you, Number Three?”

Her tongue feels thick in her mouth, and for a moment she feels like she’s forgotten how to speak. “I-” she stammers, feeling like she’s watching herself from outside her body, “Um. Okay. It took me a while to- to drift off.”

He frowns, and something in her tenses, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “I’m sorry to hear that, Number Three. I’m sure your mother can make you a cup of hot cocoa before bed this evening.” Allison stares. They all do, slack jawed. Apparently oblivious to their shock, he continues without missing a beat, “You’re a growing girl, we don’t want you to be overtired.”

Then he asks the others. Even Vanya, who Allison can’t remember him addressing in… years.

When Mom comes by to pick up their plates, he _thanks_ her. Its then that Allison knows, without a doubt, that it actually worked. If this was a trick, then he would never even _think_ to thank what she knows he perceives as a dumb object.

_I heard a rumour that you actually love us._

She hadn’t actually thought-

_(If you ever try that again-)_

Even in the privacy of her own mind, Allison never actually thought of him as a human being, just as susceptible to her powers as anyone else.

* * *

Immediately after breakfast, they gather together, Luther asking if they think Dad’s sick, if he’s hit his head, if any of them saw anything. Allison doesn’t say anything, and Klaus is the one to finally talk about the elephant in the room: “Well, if he is sick, I don’t think I mind.”

Luther turns on him, jaw set. “What do you mean, you don’t mind? There could be something really wrong with him! He might need our help!” His expression shutters as something else apparently occurs to him, “Maybe that’s _not dad._ Maybe somebody kidnapped him and left a replacement-”

“-but they didn’t know how much of a _dick_ he is?” Diego murmurs, drawing Luther’s ire.

“Hey-!” he starts to say, curling his hands into fists, when Five speaks.

“I don’t think he’s been bodysnatched,” her brother says, eyes boring into her own. “I think there’s a far more likely explanation… Allison?”

She bites her lip, but doesn’t deny it. Luther’s expression transforms from one of anger to bewilderment. “Allison?” he says again, her name half a question and half a plea.

“You Rumoured him,” Ben breathes, his eyes wide and- appreciative?

_(If you ever try that again-)_

“Allison,” Luther repeats, his expression betrayed, “you didn’t?”

“I did,” she says quietly, in the otherwise silent room and lifts her chin. What's done is done is done, and there's no point in pretending.

 _“What?!”_ Luther shouts, as everyone starts talking at once. Vanya puts her hands over her mouth, in shock or delight Allison can't tell, and Ben is whispering something hurriedly to Klaus which is making him grin wider and wider, a way she hasn’t seen him smile in years. Diego is laughing, shocked and relieved and a touch hysterical, and Five is peppering her with questions: _how did you do it, what did you say, when-_

“You’ve gotta fix it!” Luther cries, and every head snaps towards him.

 _“Why?”_ Ben, unexpectedly, is the one to half snarl at him.

“Because he’s our _dad!”_ Luther replies, running a hand through his hair shakily, “We can’t just use our powers on him! That’s immoral, that’s what _villains_ do! We’re meant to stop evil with our powers, not use them on our family!”

_(If you ever try that again-)_

“So when you threw me halfway across the courtyard in training, that wasn’t using your powers?” Klaus snaps. “Or Five cheating-”

“-adapting-”

“- _cheating_ at the staircase race? That’s not using his powers?”

“This is different,” Luther insists, his jaw set, “that was training. This is Dad, _our Dad-”_

“What Rumour did you tell him?” Vanya speaks for the first time, twisting her hands together in that anxious way of hers.

“I… I told him that he loves us.”

Luther stops talking at that, his mouth slightly ajar. Diego curls his arms around him, and Klaus looks away. Vanya sways minutely, as if the answer has literal weight, and Ben hunches over. Five crosses his arms, and begins to pace. “Those were your exact words?” he asks after a few laps across the hall. “I heard a rumour that you love us?”

She nods shallowly, knowing that to repeat the words would be to risk accidentally using them on everyone in earshot. “Dad loves us,” Luther breaks in, apparently having broken through his shock, “he does.”

“If Dad loves us, then the Rumour would have made no difference.” Ben says, his eyes meeting those of their eldest brother dead on. Allison can't remember the last time that happened, the last time Ben was actually entirely present in a conversation, not half reading a book or lost in thought. “He can't have loved us before. If he had, his behaviour wouldn’t have changed, because it already would have been true.”

Luther staggers like he's been punched. He swallows, takes a deep breath. “That’s not true,” he says, and then turns to Allison, and she’s taken aback to see the shine of tears in his eyes, “Take it _back_. Rumour him back to normal.”

_(If you ever try that again-)_

Allison loves Luther. If she’s honest with herself, she loves him more than anyone else, more than she thinks a sister should love a brother, or at least differently. And it hurts, knowing she’s hurt him, is hurting him, will keep on hurting him. (Dad always said she was a selfish creature, even before she knew what the word meant. He never bothered to pretend he didn't hate her, didn't hate all of them in one way or another.) But she doesn’t even have to think about it. She shakes her head, and folds her arms tightly.

“No.”

* * *

In the end, Luther can’t make her do anything, and when she suggests they vote on it, everyone but him votes not to take it back. He storms off to his room, slamming the door, and Klaus lets out a low whistle. She starts to go after him, but Vanya of all people catches her by the arm. “Give him some time,” her sister tells her, and Allison sees the wisdom in it.

For lessons, they tell Pogo that Luther’s sick, and if the butler knows they’re lying through their teeth, he doesn’t let on. At lunch, Luther emerges from his bedroom with a weak lie about a headache and gets Grace’s special Get-Well-Soon soup. He doesn’t speak to her, doesn’t speak to anyone, but when they all stand up for the afternoon activities, he goes with them.

“I don’t like it,” he finally breaks halfway through PE, “but I can’t… I can’t change it. Just, promise me, if it looks like its hurting him, you’ll take it off?”

“Promise,” Allison says softly, and wonders if she’s lying.

* * *

As she gets older, Allison is learning more about her powers. She knows they’re limited in some ways, and not in others; she can’t tell people to change things about themselves that cannot be altered. She tried telling her nanny once that she heard a rumour she had pink hair, and she’d gone to dye it in the kitchen sink rather than reality bending and it changing then and there like magic.

Allison had kind of wanted magic, but her Rumours have a magic of their own.

Similarly, if somebody doesn’t know what she’s saying, the Rumours don’t work. She tried Rumouring a Chinese tourist once, on one of her personal training sessions, the ones that made her feel dirty and hoarse and hollow, and the old lady had just frowned and told her “I... no understand...” over and over in broken English. If she just Rumours somebody to do a single task, they’ll do it, and then the Rumour will have no more power.

_(If you ever try that again-)_

However, if she doesn’t specify, the Rumour lasts - as far as she knows - forever, and growing more and more powerful as time passes.

That doesn’t mean she has complete confidence that Sir Reginald will stay like this. She has nightmares about it, about what he’ll do if he breaks out, how he’ll punish her. But days pass, then a few weeks, and she stops being so sure that the next words out of his mouth will be filled with righteous wrath and fury.

_(IF YOU EVER TRY THAT AGAIN-)_

She knows Pogo has noticed something’s off about him, about all of them. She knows nobody will say anything, not even Luther, because in exchange for her promise to end it if it starts to hurt Sir Reginald, he promised not to breathe a word to anyone. She knows Luther keeps his promises, even if she isn’t so sure about herself just yet.

Slowly but surely, the Academy begins to change: Klaus tells Ben a joke at dinner two weeks after Allison first spread the rumour, and receives no punishment. The next day, they’re all having quiet conversations at breakfast, and mealtimes begin to feel less like military affairs, although Reginald always stresses that they should keep their backs straight to help their posture.

A week after that, he goes into each of their individual rooms just before lights out and wishes them goodnight. Allison cries a little bit when she’s sure he’s gone. The next morning, Luther doesn’t even mention the Rumour, not once. Usually he throws in a guilt-trip here and there, about free will and choice and responsibility, but he’s completely silent on the topic.

 _(IF YOU_ _EVER TRY THAT AGAIN_ -)

About a month in, at breakfast, Dad taps his glass with a spoon to get their attention. “Your mother,” he begins awkwardly, clearing his throat a couple of times, “has brought to my attention that some of you have selected names for yourselves. If you would rather they be used instead of your numbers… that will be permitted from now on.”

Allison has been Allison for six years now. She picked it out at five and three-quarters, after going through the baby names book with Mom for a week, playing with being a Jenny and a Lucy and a Renee. Klaus has been Klaus for the same amount of time; they were the first to choose. Diego had been next, and then Vanya and Ben. Luther had taken the longest, confiding in Allison that it felt a bit like a betrayal; she isn’t quite sure where he got Luther from, though. Klaus and Diego and Vanya all had their names because of where they were born - Germany, Mexico and Russia respectively, all wanting a small piece of where they were from to carry round with them. Ben had wanted a normal name, because Ben has always wanted to be normal, and Allison had chosen Allison because it was popular and because she wanted to be popular too.

Five, and Five alone, had decided he didn’t want a name. Allison didn’t push him on it, and neither did Mom, so Five he remained.

Never once, not in six years (not in twelve years, twelve years she’s been his daughter, twelve years he could have given her a name) had Dad ever referred to her - or any of the others - as anything other than a number.

He’d never told them off for their names, not really; just ignored them, as he ignored everything else about them besides their powers.

The first time he says _Allison_ , she shivers.

* * *

_(If you ever try that again,_ Sir Reginald had said to her once upon a time, shaking with fury,  _I'll cut out your tongue._ She'd believed him. She hadn't yet learned the alphabet, although she could write her number - two little curls, round and bouncy like her hair - and she'd only ever been exposed to the outside world by the nanny that Sir Reginald had dismissed post-haste when Grace became their mother. She'd known very little except that her father could hurt her, would hurt her, that nobody would stop him, at least nobody that could. Pogo had stood in the same room and didn't say a word, just sent her a sad look that was meant to show he didn't agree with it - not really - but what he really told her in that moment was that he'd stand by and watch her suffer no matter what. Stand by and watch them all suffer, no matter what he did to them. A terrible thing for a little girl to learn, that she wasn't safe in her own home, that none of them ever really were.

She's scared, and she's alone, even when she's in a crowded room. She blows out her candle on their joint birthday cake once a year, she loops arms with Vanya and giggles with Luther and yells at Klaus for stealing her best dresses. She watches. She waits. She runs. She waits, she waits, she waits. She waits for so long she didn't even know she was waiting anymore, just something in her gut saying _hold on, hold on_. And then one day, years later, when Reginald's sure she's good and scared and stupid, she tries again.

He never even saw it coming.)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at [mayfriend](http://mayfriend.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
